|
|
The recent election in Tamilnadu clearly indicated that in a growing,
poverty-ridden democracy there would always be discontentment. When
all the sections of the society can not be satisfied, this despondency
would also grow. In such a scenario, the anti-incumbency factor would
go in favour of the opposition party. One might say that there are a
few states where people give a mandate to rule again and again to the
same party (for instance to the Left Front in WestBengal). Also, recently
TDP in AP got the people’s mandate for the consecutive second term.
But these are exceptions rather than the norm. These exceptions are
basically due to the excellent performance that addressed the issues
concerning all sections of the people (rural, urban, poor, entrepreneurial,
rich, educated, illiterate) or due to strong ideological Commitment
of people like in West Bengal.
Will concessions facilitate voting?
The biggest learning of the recent election is that the elite Intellectuals
must go to the pooling booths. The netizens through many fora/opinion
polls expressed their anxiety to prevent AIADMK from coming back to
power. But they hardly bothered to go to polling booths (recall that
the voting percentage is a meager 58% and this could be partly due to
the one hour reduction in polling time from 10 to 9 hours). Since electronic
voting method is less laborious, we must increase the number of voting
time from morning 7 am to evening 8 pm.
Some sections recommend that
voting must be made compulsory. As any form of compulsion is anti-democratic,
I suggest that the government give few concessions to those who vote.
This can not be viewed as differentiation. If it is so, giving Bharat
Ratna and other civilian awards is also a differentiation in a democracy.
It is not suggested that you punish a few for not voting. But you facilitate
voting by giving away few concessions. For instance, a Tax concession
of 1% can be announced. For the poor who won’t even come under the tax
bracket, concessions may be given in the form of facilitating admission
for their kids in schools or treatment in government hospital or more
amount of food material under PDS.
......more
|